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153. The Earthling
The alarm went off in the mobile phone on the nightstand. It began to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is the same piece for every alarm in the phone, but this time it was announcing 9:21am on Saturday, 21st December 2024. I had only been asleep for two or three hours.
I grabbed my glasses and phone and texted a dear friend in the States. “Winter Solstice right now.”
They were there. They were awake. They responded. “The Winter Solstice is not an end but a doorway, wrapped in frost and held open by the moon.”
The moon was beyond the view of my bedroom windows. Had I seen it, it would have been far to the west, a waning gibbous moon, much closer to my friend. My friend went on to ask, “Have you slept yet or are you up early?”
I explained. “I was asleep. I set my alarm for solstices and equinoxes.”
They went on to write, “The winter solstice feels like a quiet turning point, a pause between breath and exhale. The hush before the slow return of light. What does it make you feel?”
“Small. Very small.”
“Definitely,” they replied.
I wrote, “I remind myself that I am an insignificant rider on this immense spinning globe.”
Before going back to sleep, I further pondered the arrival of winter. For thousands of years, humanity recognized and marked this moment. They understood that those occupants floating in their sky above them followed a pattern. For millennia, they did not understand that we were one more occupant of that heaven, adjoining those bodies in a tangled tango. In a small way, setting the alarm was how I continued in the ancient tradition, by being awake for this moment. The northern hemisphere is leaning its furthest away from the sun as with the moon we do-si-do around it. I didn’t want to be asleep when it happened.
Most people are oblivious to the astronomical milestones that mark where we are in our journey. We are allotted to witness only so many solstices and equinoxes. I want to stop and celebrate the milestones.
This Wednesday is the tenth Christmas dinner I will share with my in-laws. That is how long I have been living in Wales. It was last week that I visited the site of my wife’s burial. It is an unmarked grave in a hillside meadow with an idyllic view. I could use global satellite positioning to determine where her body lies. Instead, I used the young sessile oak that was planted close by. I know the ground next to her waits for me, but I don’t know if I will be closer to the oak or on her other side.
When I visited, the tree was naked, the lobed leaves brown and scattered about the field. The oak had a likelier capacity for hearing me than she did, but I spoke to her nonetheless. I can talk to her at home, in the picture frame on my desk, where it isn’t damp and cold. There is never a need to come to her grave, yet it satisfies a need to be near her, to prove I still love her. Who is requiring this proof?
It is the same reason this planet needs to know I am conscious of its spin. My identity is wrapped in memories and the awareness of the passage of time.
Mr Bentzman will continue to report here regularly about
the events and concerns of his life. If you've any
comments or suggestions, he would be pleased to hear from you.
You can find his
several books at www.Bentzman.com.
Enshrined
Inside Me, his second collection of
essays, is now available to purchase.
